<p>It won't allow more than 4000 characters. If I'm just under the character limit, with 730 words, is that too much? Any feedback is most appreciated!</p>
<p>Chances are by 730 words the adrep won't have even read through your entire essay. Didn't you see the (250 - 500) word limit?</p>
<p>Indeed, I did. But I know many, many people go over. I thought as long as it fit on one page...</p>
<p>Many of my senior friends have actually said the opposite. Word limit doesn't matter. Chances are, your reader is going to finish reading your essay.</p>
<p>230 words is a little steep, thats almost one and half times as big.</p>
<p>My advice is not to worry. Mine was roughly that length, do a print preview on Adobe to double-check everything fits (even though a stupid box might pop up telling you character count). If your essay is good, and the college you are applying to genuinely cares about its applicants, then the admissions officers will read your essay in its entirety. Trim and clean your essay where you can, but what matters most is clearly conveying your ideas, premise, experiences, whatever. So, again, 230 words over is okay.</p>
<p>Yeah. I've read on some threads about applicants going WAY overboard! However, they got in EA at places like Harvard and MIT, most likely because those essays were meaningful and not b/s. I'm takling about some successful applicants who submitted nearly 1000 word-long common app. essays and essays nearly as long, if not longer for their supplements.
ONLY if you've taken the time to edit your essay - I mean getting rid of sentences that you can ABSOLUTELY do without and maybe changing your diction to reduce the word count - do I suggest that you go ahead and send your essay!
I applied to Harvard EA with a 496 word-long common app essay and a supplement (additional) essay of 637 words. But I made sure to carefully edit it so that only the most meaningful information was conveyed. Who else applied to Harvard EA?
Good luck to everyone!</p>
<p>-Jon :)</p>
<p>well, a 730-word may be shorter than some 500-word essays, simply because the overall number of letters therein may be far lower than those in some 500-worders....anyway, those, I think, are still reasonable limits...</p>
<p>a short essay <300 may get the job done - depends on the applicant. However (except in very exceptional cases), i think it's unfair to send in an overly long essay. why should a reader spend more time on your essay than on another applicant's, 'sides, there are loadsa more essays to be read....and if unfortunately, the reader has gone far into the evening, having read a handful, and this very long essay creates no particular interest after exceeding standard reading time, or thereabouts, that's a big minus....</p>
<p>the exceptions: e.g. the ED admit to penn who wrote a 6-page why-penn essay....well, i think that there is a lot less risk involved in sending in long essays for early programs (since there are a lot less essays to read) than for RD programs, where there are so much more to read within the same time frame....</p>
<p>I'm not sure about Penn, but I know that a lot of EA and ED programs make decisions by mid-December. In that case, the time is EXTREMELY limited for the Early admissions round. I don't think a 6 page essay would go over so well when there is very limited time. A few hundred words over the limit... not so bad if it's meaningful. Many pages = probabaly not good (unless one really captivates the reader and can manage to keep 'em going for 6 ENTIRE pages)! Just my two cents. Good luck everyone!</p>
<p>-Jon :)</p>
<p>So the consensus is that 730 words would be -okay- if the essay is tightly written and meaningful? If I can cut it down to say, 690, but need to cut out a few sentences of importance, is that preferable?</p>
<p>Yeah! Just remember MEANINGFULNESS take precedence over being tightly written. As long as it'll make you stand out in the readers' eyes, then yeah over the word limit is ok. Keyword: meaningfulness!</p>
<p>My essay was pretty long initially, and I had to cut it down a ton. Now it's at 548, just 48 words over the limit. But you have to remember that some of those "words" are really things like, "the," "it," "a," etc.</p>
<p>Well my common app essay that turned out being 496 words (just 4 from the word limit) was initially A LOT longer. It started out at over 1000 words. With some good editing and help from my English teachers and guidance counselors, I got it down to the 600s. Then it turns out I was able to get rid of an entire paragraph (that I had been clinging onto) b/c it was more philosophical than meaningful. That's my story on how I got it down to the word limit. Good luck!</p>
<p>-Jon :D</p>
<p>"...of his large class. Decision: Admitted. Key factors: He is from an "outreach" area where the school wants to encourage more applicants. "He wrote a six-page essay saying why he wants to be here. I know we don't like long essays. But I thought 'Great, a Kansan who's dying for Penn,'" says Marisa Halm, regional director of admissions...."</p>
<p>got that thru penn's site, check out: <a href="http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl?/durable/1998/12/15/fp11s1-csm.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/durableRedirect.pl?/durable/1998/12/15/fp11s1-csm.shtml</a></p>
<p>however, IMHO, (hate to sound pedantic, but) i wouldn't encourage anyone to go beyond word limits. it's not impossible to speak volumes about oneself without exceeding the 500-word limit.
Smariomaster, i mean, if one is an EDer, his commitment to attend + a strong, but long essay wouldn't hurt</p>
<p>A strong essay definitely wouldn't hurt. I'm not so sure that you can generalize and include "long." Again, the EA and ED time frame is limited! If it's a powerful essay and would captivate a reader for 6 pages - then by all means, it's fine. But if one can say pretty much the same stuff in a page (no more than say, 350 words over the limit), then one stands a good chance. Boring the adcoms may detract from their overall impression that an applicant is eager to attend. It all depends on the specific circumstances, so I don't think we ought to be generalizing about anything, Jrock. Good luck to everyone!</p>
<p>Jon :)</p>
<p>okay, so would a 590 word essay be too much? or would it be okay?</p>
<p>590 would be much better than a 730. if you think it cannot be cut anymore, then jsut tstick to it. mine is about 610.</p>
<p>I got mine down to 511 before submitting it. I think cutting it down makes it better; you only keep what you absolutely want them to hear and what will stand out the most.</p>
<p>My common application essay was between 700 and 800 words. I also made the activities short answer into a 700 word essay, as I called a few colleges and they all said it was OK to attach an additional page. </p>
<p>Don't worry about word limits; if the essay is good, people will have no problem reading all of it. Just make sure everything in the essay is needed. It's always better to cut it down closer to the limit if you can, but not if you are removing meaningful material.</p>
<p>590 is a lot better than a lot of the other numbers I've been coming across on this thread. But again, it's quality that matters - more than quantity. I personally hated cutting down my common app. essay. I hated cutting it down because I lost a lot of the flair and style in my writing. However, the truly most improtant information did stay. 496 words isn't bad, considering I started out at over 1000 words. Since the Harvard Supplement Essay (the additional essay) didn't have a word limit, I was a little less stirct with it. It ended up being 637 words. However, BOTH essays were but a single page long, each! I submitted them via regular mail, b/c I wasn't ready to submit 'em while I was applying online. Definitely concern yourselves with quality first! If you've got an awesome essay and it's above the limit, try editing with teachers, counselors, friends, family - whoever will help you out. It might entail taking out an entire paragraph (like in my case) to just getting rid of unnecessary words, or "empty modifiers" (lol don't ask me, my English teacher helped me with that - I guess it's useless adjectives though). Ultimately, you should strive to keep it no more than 10-50 words over. My guidance counselor called Harvard, and they said they are STRICT about the word limit. You don't want "word count" to be the deciding factor that gets you disqualified over a candidate with similar credentials. Keep that in mind! Good luck to you all!</p>
<p>-Jon :) :D</p>